23 days until Thanksgiving! How will you bring a little Culture Kitchen into your Celebration?
As one of the biggest food holidays of the year approaches, we’ve been cooking up ideas to add exciting new flavors and traditions to all our Thanksgiving celebrations. Our chefs come from around the world and now have made a home in the US and get to celebrate America’s great day of Thanks which is of course, all centered around food! As a nation build on immigration and a holiday inspired by sharing in another culture’s food traditions (think Pilgrims and Indians), today we’re launching 24 days of Thanksgiving to help everyone bring their ethnic food love to the T-Day table.
From today until Thanksgiving, look out for our daily tips, tricks, and secrets to make your Thanksgiving extra special this year. From recipes, to entertaining tips from our chefs, this year whether you are hosting Thanksgiving for the first time, bringing a dish to a friend’s potluck style Turkey Day or pulling together a turkey sandwich for yourself, here are some fun ways to explore and create new traditions.
Day 1 Simple Swaps: Appetizers
One easy way to shake things up a little and create new traditions is to bring some new Culture Kitchen appetizers into your home for Thanksgiving. These are fun small bites that will introduce new flavors to the holiday while still allowing for the bird to take center stage. Check out our recipe database here. Some of our favorites are:
Suchitra’s Sev Batata Puris
This tasty little dish is a snap to make and already bite size because it’s one of Mumbai’s (Let’s be honest, Suchitra and anyone who lived there before 1995 still calls it Bombay) most loved street foods. What is street food? The freshest and hippest food you can get on the go in Bombay. There is a big street food culture in Bombay and since Suchitra grew up there, some of her greatest teenage memories are of having Sev Batata Puris with her friends making this a perfect appetizer to celebrate with loved ones.
These crunchy little snacks are easy to make, yet extremely satisfying – be sure to make enough because they disappear quickly! With a spicy cilantro chutney and a sweet date chutney topping off a crisp cracker, you’ll love this balance of sweet and savory. You can use these as an exciting alternative to canapés while retaining that one-bite finger food element. You can prepare them in advance or set out the ingredients to let your kitchen helpers or guests do it themselves giving you time to get the rest of your Thanksgiving meal ready. Get Suchitra’s recipe here!
Linh’s Banh Khot
Vietnamese meals are comprised of a number of small dishes always of light and fresh ingredients. For American standards, you might even say they are meals of appetizers This is Linh’s favorite cute, small and snacky dish. Anyone who was lucky enough to make it to SF’s Forage market before it’s close, would remember Linh selling these tasty little bites. That being said, this particular dish has captured the hearts of the Culture Kitchen staff and is one of our favorite Vietnamese dishes we’ve learned from Linh. While Linh serves these with lettuce cups to wrap the mini shrimp pancake bites in and dip in a salty-sweet sauce, they are also delicious on their own.
Use these savory mouthfuls to add new flavor dimensions to your Thanksgiving kick-off. Their small size make them the perfect finger food for your guests to munch on without them filling up too much before the meal begins. Kids and adults alike will love dipping these mini pancake bites in the salty-sweet dipping sauce. Get Linh’s recipe here!
Regardless of how to share your Thanksgiving, here are some new recipes that will surely give your dinner a worldly feel and bring a little Culture Kitchen to your home.
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